


stand firm in the dirt

by havisham



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Antagonism Leads to Sex, Cousin Incest, Enemies to Lovers, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mental Link, Ritual Sex, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:22:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: “Why do you do things like this?” T’Challa said, his boot resting lightly on Erik’s chest.“Fuck you,” Erik spat out. “Fuck this. Fuck Wakanda. And fuck you twice for keeping me alive when I wanted to die.”





	stand firm in the dirt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opheliahyde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [不知悔改](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14523456) by [annebaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annebaby/pseuds/annebaby)



> Hi opheliahyde! Your T'Challa/Erik prompt was so amazing, I had to try to fill it. I hope you like it!

 

He chose to die. Even if, for a moment, a second, he had acknowledged that T’Challa was worthy — that he was the true king, not because of tradition or their legacy, but because of how he pulled through blood and pain and came to compassion and love — Erik didn’t want to live in the world where T’Challa was king. He chose death. Better death than bondage. 

So when he had woken up again, Erik felt nothing but despair. But he wasn’t laid up in a hospital somewhere, there was nothing stark and white about this place. The air was heavy with the scent of growing things and moisture, like after a heavy rain. A pair of bright eyes glowed down at him. A panther’s eyes. 

Bast didn’t speak to him, only regarded him steadily. Erik sat up and looked around. The sky was purple and scattered with stars, like it had been when he had met with his father during his initiation. But this wasn’t a pretend-version of their old apartment in Oakland. It wasn’t Wakanda either. It was simply — elsewhere. 

_Are you ready, N’Jadaka?_

“I should be dead. Send me to the place where you keep the damned and I won’t complain.” Much, anyway. 

The goddess laughed at him. _I cannot send you there until you are completely dead._

“Completely? What am I, then?” 

_Only half. Come back to me when you have done what you needed to do, N’Jadaka._

Erik woke up again. This time, he was in a hospital — clean, white, sterile. He couldn’t see any restraints, but when he tried to move, he couldn’t. Eventually, he stopped struggling and sighed. So it was bondage, not death, for him. 

As soon as he was able to, he was going to kill T’Challa for real. 

*

No, Erik wouldn't kill T’Challa right away, he decided, as his body mended around him, nanites coated with vibranium weaving in and out of his skin, knitting together his torn muscles with maximum efficiency and a minimum of pain. He had researched this. He didn’t want to be subjected to it. 

People came in and out of his hospital room. He didn't recognize any of them. He figured he'd been abandoned by his family for the second time and that kept the fires burning. He would make T’Challa suffer for what he did. 

He would make him pay for saving him against his will. 

Erik’s first visitor wasn’t T’Challa after all, but the Queen Ramonda. She eyed him cautiously, like he would leap up and bite her. Erik grinned at her, biting the air more than anything else. But to her favor she didn't flinch. Without any small talk, she told him that her son had given her his life story, how he'd been abandoned by her husband, how he'd tried to avenge his father. “I understand you better now,” she said, with an air of dignity that was hard to ridicule. But Erik rolled his eyes. He wasn’t asking for her forgiveness. 

“You always come cleaning up after your kids’ messes, Auntie?” 

“T’Challa has always cleaned up after himself,” Ramonda said. “Perhaps you can learn from him.” With that said, she swept out of the room, leaving Erik with the terrible knowledge that he’d fallen on his ass without even getting up. 

*

At first, he ignored it. Pretended it wasn’t there. He was in too much pain to realize, and then, in too much fucking rage to really feel it, but — yeah, it came to him in bits and pieces. 

He could feel what T’Challa was feeling. T’Challa was a distinct presence in his mind, something much like the warmth of the sun against Erik’s chilled skin. He could feel T’Challa far away, in America, in Oakland of all places, in the place Erik grew up in. The fuck was he doing there? What, did he think that making weak gestures would be enough for Erik to forgive him? 

In a way, it made sense. They were both the Black Panther, and there was never supposed to be two of them. Since Erik hadn’t died, since T’Challa had carelessly saved him, everything had gotten fucked up. 

Both he and Erik had — come together, in a way. _Soul to soul_ , just like the corny records his father used to listen to before things had gone to shit. 

It was then Erik did what was second-nature to him now. He pushed his anger out, sharpened it into a weapon, a spear aimed at T’Challa’s heart. It hadn’t taken him very long to realize that this was a two-way connection. If he could feel everything T’Challa could feel, then T’Challa could feel what he felt. And he still wanted T’Challa to suffer. 

After a few weeks of recovery, Erik was ready to escape. It wasn’t as easy as it would’ve been before, and as much as he hated to admit it, he’d gotten used to people like Klaue getting him in and out. Now, it was only himself and that would have to be plenty — since he didn’t want to break Wakanda again, just escape it. 

He was just about to make it, too, on a stolen state-of-the-art jet that would be sci-fi in the rest of the world, when a familiar voice floated over the intercom. “Erik,” T’Challa said, “isn’t it time you stopped running?” 

“Get out of my head,” Erik muttered to himself, though he was sure T’Challa could hear him. 

“I could ask the same for you,” T’Challa said, trying to sound reasonable, like an asshole, like Erik couldn’t feel how his heart was racing, how much he wanted — what? What did T’Challa want from him? People always, always, wanted to take things from him. And Erik was cool with it, he knew he was always gonna be a commodity to buy and sell. 

But now he wasn’t sure what T’Challa wanted was something he could part with. So, he ignored T’Challa’s warning and surged ahead. If T’Challa wanted to stop him, he would have to catch him first. 

*

“Why do you do things like this?” T’Challa said, his boot resting lightly on Erik’s chest. 

“Fuck you,” Erik spat out. “Fuck this. Fuck Wakanda. And fuck you twice for keeping me alive when I wanted to die.” 

“I didn't,” T’Challa said, moving back so Erik sit up if he wanted to. Erik didn't want to — he remained on the ground. He didn't want to make it seem like the fight they'd just had had tired him, but it had. He was still in a weakened condition, otherwise —

Meditatively, T’Challa said, “In the end, I respected your decision. You remained alive due to the beneficence of the goddess. Or something like that — I can't say for sure because someone murdered the highest spiritual authority in Wakanda, you may have heard.” 

“Whatever,” Erik said with a snort. He sat up and glared at T’Challa. “He pretended to be my father's friend and let him die. He knew what was coming.” 

“Are you still so consumed with vengeance that you see nothing else, N’Jadaka?” 

Erik flinched. “Don't call me that.” 

His birth name — he had heard it spoken so rarely that he had almost forgotten the sound of it, and how it changed with the way T’Challa said it. Erik felt like he was an exposed nerve, raw and twitching. Every thought that flickered through his head, he knew T’Challa could feel it, and every emotion T’Challa felt reverberated inside of him like an empty drum. 

“How do you stop this?” he said desperately. “I don't want this. I want you out of my head!” He wanted to scream, tear out his hair. But he wanted to be in control. Feel less, lose less. 

T’Challa knelt down and for the first time, Erik saw how much will he was exerting to keep control. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. There aren’t supposed to be two Black Panthers.” 

“Tell me something I don't know,” Erik said, annoyed. “How do we stop it?” 

“I would have to — there is a ritual that perhaps, could reverse it. But the requirements are steep, and it is not regarded as a sure thing.” 

“Whatever it is, I'll do it,” Erik said, fervently. “What's the ritual? Are they gonna make us have sex?” 

T’Challa looked slightly nonplussed. “So you've heard of it?” 

*

It wasn’t supposed to be a public ceremony, which Erik took immediate issue with. Did T’Challa want to hide this from his beloved people, did he want to _hide_ his shame? 

“I am not ashamed,” T’Challa said easily. “Although it is true that you are not exactly the most popular man in Wakanda. You have damaged many lives here.” 

Erik rolled his eyes. _He_ hadn't shot those War-Dogs out of the sky, had he? 

They were in some beautifully decorated room off of T’Challa’s quarters, with a bank of windows that looked out to mountains and waterfalls, mists and rocky ledges. In short, Wakanda, wild and beautiful. 

This was, T’Challa had said, a balancing ritual. By exchanging each other’s energy, it was possible, they said, that any unwanted connections could be severed. 

“Like they love you so much? I seem to remember a lot of your people were happy enough to switch their loyalties to me, as soon as you were beaten.” Erik smirked. “Human nature.” 

“Don't you underestimate yourself, Erik?” 

Erik bit back a biting response. At least T’Challa wasn't calling him N’Jadaka anymore. Turning his back to him, Erik began to strip down from his clothes, the ones he'd stolen when he escaped from his hospital bed. 

Finally he turned around and stood naked in front of T’Challa and spread out his hands appealingly. “Well? Can't you get it up?” 

T’Challa stripped too and Erik watched him with a jaundiced eye and clicked his tongue impatiently. 

The first blow threw him off kilter, but Erik, weakened as he was, off-balance as he felt now, managed to right himself and launch himself at T’Challa’s middle. T’Challa tried to sidestep him, but didn't quite manage. 

They were evenly matched, in some ways, though Erik would rather die again than admit it. T’Challa was an honorable fighter, but he wouldn’t lose if he could help it and Erik — well, he would do anything to win. It seemed like hours passed as they fought, though in reality it must have been only a few minutes. 

They had no weapons with them, just muscle against muscle, skin on skin. It would’ve been easy to cheat, to sneak in a blade or something like that, but Erik was confident that he could beat T’Challa again. Without resorting to cheating. 

He could. He _would._

The fact that they had access to each other’s emotions — and with that, to the thoughts that were barely thoughts, sub-thoughts barely above a feeling. _He’s going to move there._ Erik moved in the opposite way. _He’s going to lunge here._ T’Challa moved back smoothly, almost tripping Eric up. 

Erik growled, deep in his throat. “How is this going to separate us from each other? We always do this!” 

“The ceremony is either to seperate or to bring together. Bast will chose one way or the other.” 

“Always a fucking catch with you,” Erik muttered. 

“Aren’t you the same?” 

Despite himself, Erik grinned. T’Challa was perceptive enough, when he wanted to be. 

As they fought, Erik could feel the heat rising off of him, excitement clamoring against anger, lust winning over rage. He didn’t know if T’Challa felt the same, but judging from the glimpse of his face and the tension running through his body he did. 

It was a tension that Erik shared. He knew he was hard and that was to be expected, with situations like this, where the signals got mixed and blood got flowing. Even so, when T’Challa’s hands stole across Erik’s cock, he couldn’t help but groan, deep in his throat. 

T’Challa was looking at him, his eyes wide, a question visible there. 

“Yeah,” Erik said and the word felt like a punch in the gut. There was a line that they shouldn’t be so ready to cross, but he was. He wanted to so badly that he said it, he meant it, and he would have it.

Erik’s scars extended down his stomach and onto his thighs, the bumps and grooves of them weren’t particularly sensitive now, but when T’Challa’s cock, hot and wet, pushed against them, Erik thought that he could feel it more, feel it deeper because of them. They found a rough kind of balance, pushing and pulling against each other, silent except for the sounds that their bodies made. 

Fuck. Erik loved it. Fuck, he hated it. 

T’Challa felt so right against him, so right and so indescribably familiar that he didn’t need to be told that the ritual had failed, or rather, it had succeed in doing what he didn’t want it to do — that is to say, he was connected to T’Challa, whether he wanted to be or not. 

Well. In for a penny, in for a pound, his father used to say (and Erik and his mom would laugh at him because sometimes his English, though always excellent, would sound like he’d learned it from some stuffy nineteenth century British novel) — although it was probably not a great idea to be thinking of him — or T’Challa’s father either. Neither would’ve liked it, seeing one son riding the other like there was no tomorrow. 

But that’s the thing — they were really a family of disappointments. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta, Prinzenhasserin! 
> 
> Title from Tupac's [Last Muthafucka Breathin'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTZbvIhbZxY), because irony.


End file.
